Shostakovich's fifteen string quartets, along
with Bartok's six, are the greatest of the twentieth century.
They also differ markedly. Shostakovich's are melodic, lyrical
and often direct (and perhaps more intimate, not least in the
final three), whereas Bartok's are abrasive and often make for
an uncomfortable listening experience, astonishingly powerful
though they are. Bartok's span his entire creative life, Shostakovich's
do not. Although he also wrote fifteen symphonies, it is perhaps
significant that the quartets do not all mirror the contemporaneous
issues from which the symphonies' creative energy is derived.
The First Quartet, from 1938, appears after both the Fourth
and Fifth Symphonies, yet there is none of the monumentalism,
none of the terror, high tragedy or brutal destructiveness that
marks those masterpieces out from Shostakovich's earlier works.

Although the First Quartet is not his shortest
(that honour falls to the Seventh), it is in many ways the most
typically Beethovenian. Its four movements are short, but it
is not until the second movement, with its lyricism and melodic
phrasing, that we begin to hear a master of shading and colour
at work. The Emersons play it persuasively, although it not
until the Second Quartet that we hear both Shostakovich and
the Emersons in more astonishing form. Although this is the
only wartime quartet (1944), it does not have quite the power
or bleak desolation of the Eighth (inspired by the bombing of
Dresden) written in 1960. It does, however, have an urgent,
almost unsettling plangency (sample the Emersons in the final
movement from 6'38 as the pace quickens and then hollows out
to a slow, haunting close). One of his longest quartets, the
Emerson's handle the tension of the moderato and adagio superbly,
the final movement's variations shadowed by some hauntingly
bare, almost surreal upper harmonics.

The Fourth and Fifth Quartets mark the beginnings
of Shostakovich's mature quartet style. The Fourth's (1949)
opening movement, with its recitative high violins singing archingly,
before plunging into shadowy distillation, is movingly played
by the Emersons. The second movement andantino is beautifully
phrased (the soulful, searching violin and viola passage leading
to the cello's first entry at 1'16 is heavenly), and the third
movement scherzo is duly menacing. The cello is dark and brooding,
the violins at 2'15 and 2'39 chattering like blackbirds. The
last movement, which suggests Shostakovich's first direct referencing
to death in any of the quartets, is compellingly drawn and ends
superbly. At 8'15 the progression towards stasis begins with
a melody on the cello , reinstated at 8'46, and hollow pizzicato
follows like death itself hammering out its trenchant calling.

The Fifth (1952) is Shostakovich's first quartet
to have a direct connection with one of the symphonies, in this
case the Tenth. The portraiture evinced in the Scherzo of the
Tenth is here somewhat replicated. The bass line is strongly
drawn, as is the droning lyricism. The pacing is fast, the string
playing often disfigured by grotesquely drawn harmonies (6'20
onwards), and the direct quotes from the Tenth at 7'50 to 8'06
are savagely presented. By contrast, the Sixth Quartet, from
1956, is his first post-Stalinist one. Compared with both the
Fourth and the Fifth Quartets it is substantially less weighty,
certainly more dance-like in its rhythms and more lyrical than
the monstrous, forbidding writing Shostakovich felt compelled
to write for its predecessor. Darkness does loom transparently
towards the end, invading like an incoming tide imperceptibly
clouding the shore. The Emerson Quartet define this shift beautifully,
if somewhat enigmatically.

The year 1960 saw two quartets - the short Seventh
and the magnificent Eighth. The Seventh, short though it is,
has every reason to be Shostakovich's most personal work. Dedicated
to his wife, it is a work with a quite astonishing landscape.
Moving between passion and tension, it draws largely on fugal
writing to make the distinctions apparent. The upward momentum
of the third movement (to 00'16) is bitterly phrased, the turbulent
chord writing from 1'07 onwards fantastically carved and the
dissonance before 2'00, leading to the melancholic waltz theme
at 2'32, is all superbly articulated by the Emersons. The pizzicato
passages (at 4'00) shift between steel-like brightness to deep,
velvety darkness.

The Eighth is probably Shostakovich's single
most recorded string quartet. It is one of the bleakest works
he ever wrote, a work where there appears an honest reflection
that there is no hope, just despair and no reconciliation. The
opening itself is tenebrous, and totally unrelenting, the mood
not shifting until the cathartic attaca writing of the
second movement. Eugene Drucker, violinist with the Emersons,
says of the second movement, 'you have the extreme violence
.......: it depicts the frenzy and violence of war, and it's
in that context that the Jewish theme is shrieked by the two
violins in octaves'. You can hear these two octaves at 0'56
and 2'24, and the impassioned playing makes this fully realised.
Using the D-S-C-H (D-E flat-C-B) motif of the Tenth Symphony
(heard very obviously throughout the third movement, but particularly
at 1'48 to 2'50 and again at 3'33 to 3'39) the Emersons give
a reading that is both impassioned and expressively powerful.
This is certainly a case where their dynamic range is used to
greater effect than on any other recording of the work. Whilst
occasionally the Emerson's superlative technique can sometimes
mask the emotive power of Shostakovich's writing, this Eighth
has an unusually personal drama about it. Somehow, the truth
of this recording is all too unsparing. Philip Setzer's comment
that 'the skeletons get up to dance' seems wholly appropriate.

The Ninth (1964), a monumentally interconnected
work, the Tenth (1964), with its passacaglia, the Eleventh,
the most operatic of the cycle and the Twelfth (1968) all somehow
rest in the shadow of the final three quartets, a triumvirate
of despairing, almost hallucinogenic and pain-drenched works.

The Thirteenth is the only work in a single
movement, and has a particularly striking darkness to it, helped
by the dominance of the viola. Both the opening and close of
the work bring extraordinarily sensitive playing from Lawrence
Dutton, a violist with an unusually deep tone world (and shattering
intonation, just before 19'08). The pizzicato articulation and
high violin harmonics (10'01 onwards) are beautifully captured.
This quartet is both surreal (keeping in line with Shostakovich's
somewhat pill-fueled demeanour at the time) and extraordinarily
atonal (compared with its predecessors). The Emersons ply this
work with attenuated, almost marantic tone, both in the jazz
theme and the slumbering, cataleptic outer parts. Whereas the
viola dominated the Thirteenth, so the cello does the Fourteenth.
This does not perhaps inhabit the same sound world as its immediate
partners, but the Mahlerian undertones are always evident. The
Emersons play with pungency and a certain causticness. The Fifteenth
is simply as depressing a work as you will ever hear. The opening
is skeletal with notes isolated in ghostly darkness - and the
Emersons play this as if they were extracting each note one
by one from the ether. The contrast between the work's dissonance
and restrained violence is often unsettling, and more so when
the clarity of the recording makes it appear so very close to
you. That the Emersons sustain this eloquent grief-ridden tragedy
so marvellously is a miracle.

So how do the Emersons compare with others?
In terms of technique, these are the most perfectly played performances
to have yet appeared. The articulation, particularly in the
faster movements (which are taken much faster than any of their
rivals), is phenomenal, and intonation is invariably spot-on.
They have in the past (in both Beethoven and Bartok) been accused
of placing technique ahead of understanding and interpretation,
and I'm afraid that is a valid criticism in this cycle as well.
There are many extraordinary things - the last three quartets,
the Eighth, the Ninth and the Fifth which easily stand comparison
with the greatest recordings of the work. The Borodin Quartet,
on EMI (not on the later CD version, but on the earlier LPs)
bring astonishing girth to Shostakovich's fragmentary and personal
imagination. These LPs are in need of a CD release, for they
are still unsurpassed. But the Emerson cycle is now the primary
recommendation for this music on CD - easily outflanking the
Fitzwilliams on Phillips and the Eder on Naxos. DG have given
the Emersons a spacious recording, and despite the fact these
are live recordings there are no extra sounds to distract from
the pleasure of hearing this extraordinary music. I will be
reviewing the Emersons Shostakovich cycle in London (at the
Wigmore Hall and Barbican during May) for Seen & Heard and
will be interested to see what differences emerge. An important
release.

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